Even with the plethora of communications means and ease of accessibility to business listings, consumers are continuously faced with difficulties in making informed decisions about the places of businesses to frequent. When consumers are partaking upon a group event, making informed decisions and reaching a consensus among the group of people can be particularly challenging. For example, there may be a deficiency of sources where information could be conveniently obtained in regards to the business listings. Even with access to a number of options, a group of consumers sometimes cannot make a decision due to a willingness to kowtow to the strongest personality in the group, which may cause dissension and dissatisfaction in the group.
In addition, obtaining basic information, such as hours/days of operation, location, menu, as well as extensive business information, such as consumer ratings, professional ratings of food, service, and/or atmosphere, of the potential places of business to frequent, could be time consuming and labor intensive for a group of people engaged in a discussion about where to go or what to do. For example, if a consumer is in a chat session with friends via a web-based chat service, the consumer may need to utilize a third-party web-browser to obtain additional information about business listings by opening another window and going outside the current communication thread to obtain the desired information.
However, if the discussion is carried on over a cellular phone or a wireless text-based service (e.g., SMS, MMS, USSD), the users may not readily have access to information on business listings over the web. In order to obtain detailed business listing information, the consumers may need to call 411 to obtain the phone number of the business of interest and directly contact the business. This typically requires that the consumers know the places of business available for them to choose from, which is often times not the case, especially for tourists and individuals whom are out of town for business.